The Nature of Young Learners

li

D. The Nature of Young Learners

1. The Definition of Young Learners According to Harley, et al. in Cameron 2001: 15 young learners is a group of children 7-8 years that are studying a foreign language, they seem to pay more attention to sound and prosody the ‘music’ of an utterance, whereas older elder children 12-14 are more attentive to cues of word order. Meanwhile, Brumfit 1996: 67 states that young learners is a group of children level of age five to six, where they learn language without reading and writing. Lack of formal support has meant a scarcity of material and syllabuses. According to Phillips 2000: 23 young learners is a group of students level of age eleven to twelve, where they learn language by various activities. From the explanation above it can be concluded that young learners is a group of students level of age five to fourteen, where every stage they have some characteristics suitable to their level of age. When they learned language, the teacher should choose the right method or technique so that the young learners are able to study suitable to their ability and interest. 2. Young Learner’s Development Young learners’ development consists of: a. Cognitive Development b. Affective c. Psychomotor http: www.kidsdevelopment.co.uk.html a. Cognitive Development Piaget in Scott, 2002: 14 states that a child has four stages of Cognitive Development as follows: lii 1. Sensorimotor 0-2 years. This stage has some characteristics such as it begins to make use imitation, memory, and thought; it also begins to recognize that objects do not cease to exist when they hidden. It moves from reflex actions to goal-direct activity. 2. Preoperational 2-7 years It gradually develop use of language and ability to think in symbolic form, able to think operations through logically in one direction; it also has difficulties seeing another person’s point of view. 3. Concrete Operation 7-11 years Most of children are able to solve concrete hands-on problems in logical fashion, understand laws of conversation and are able to classify and seriate. They also understand revisibility. 4. Formal operational 11-adult In this stage they are able to solve abstract problems in logical fashion. They become more scientific in thinking and develop concerns about social issues. Before they learn to speak, children communicate through crying, smiling, and body movement. By the end of the first year, more or less, most children have their first word. They have entered what psychologists call the one word stage. From the explanation above, it can be concluded that children have stages in developing their cognitive based on their age. The more their age the more activities that they can do. Including they use language, the more their age they can master a lot of offer from others. The development of their language depends on their age. After formal operation stage they can solve the problem they faced. b. Affective According to Brown 2000: 143 affect refers to emotion or feeling. The affective domain is the emotional side of human behavior, and it may be juxtaposed to the liii cognitive side. The development of affective states or feelings involves a variety of personality factors, feelings both about themselves with whom they come into contact. The affective domain includes many factors: self-esteem, extroversion, inhibition, risk- taking imitation, anxiety attitudes, and emphaty Brown, 2000: 145. 1 Self- Esteem Self esteem is probably the most pervasive aspect of human behavior. It could be easily claimed that no successful cognitive or affective activity can be carried out without some degree of self-esteem, self confidence, knowledge of yourself, and belief in your own capability for the activity. Self esteem may determine for successful person, if a human being have good self-esteem he will be optimize in facing his life. 2 Inhibition All human beings, in their understanding of themselves, build sets of defenses to protect the ego. The newborn baby has no concept of its own self; gradually it learn to identify a self that is distinct from others. In childhood, the growing degree of awareness, responding, and valuing begin to create a system of affective traits that individuals identify with themselves. In adolescence, the physical, emotional, and cognitive changes of the pre-teenager and teenager bring on mounting defensive inhibition to protect a fragile ego, to ward of ideas experiences, and feeling that threaten to dismantle the organization of values and beliefs on which appraisals of self esteem have been founded. The process of building defense continues into adulthood. According to Guiroa and Ehrman in Brown, 2000: 147 human ego refers to language ego or their very personal, egoistic nature of second language acquisition. Meaning language acquisition involves some degree of identify conflict as language learners take or a new identity with their newly acquired competence. An adaptive language ego enables learners to lower the inhibitions that may impede success. liv From the explanation above it can be concluded that there are a number of steps that should be taken by teacher to create technique that reduce inhibition in the foreign language classroom. So that, the technique that he chooses will suitable to the students. A good technique will create good atmosphere in the foreign language classroom. Therefore, the teaching learning process will be running well. 3 Risk-Taking According to Rubin and Thomson in Brown, 2000: 149 risk-taking is the ability to make intelligent guesses. Impulsivity was also describe as a style that could have positive effects on language success. Learners have to be able to gamble a bit, to be willing to try out hunches about the language and take the risk of being wrong. Dufeu in Brown, 2000: 150 states that the classroom antidote to such fears is to establish an adequate affective framework so that learners’ feel comfortable as they take their first public steps in the strange world of a foreign language, to achieve this, students has to create a climate of acceptance that will stimulate self-confidence, and encourage participants to experiment and to discover the target language, allowing themselves to take risk without feeling embarrassed. From the explanation above it can be concluded that risk-taking variation seems to be factor in a number of issues in second language acquisition and pedagogy. Self- esteem seems to be closely connected to risk-taking factor: when the foolish mistakes are made, a person with high global self-esteem is not daunted by the possible consequences of being laughed at. Teachers should encourage students to guess somewhat more willingly than usual students is prone to do, and to value them as person for those risks that they take. 4 Anxiety lv Anxiety plays an important affective role in second language acquisition. Scovel in Brown, 2000: 151 states that anxiety is associated with feeling of uneasiness, frustration, self –doubt, apprehension, or worry. There are three components of foreign language anxiety identified by Horwitz in Brown, 2000: 151: 1. Communication apprehension, arising from learners’ inability to adequate express nature thoughts and ideas: 2. Fear of negative social evaluation, arising from a learners’ need to make a positive social impression on others: and 3. Test anxiety, or apprehension over academic evaluation. It means that foreign language anxiety can be distinguished from other types of anxiety and it can have a negative effect on the language learning process. 5 Emphaty According to Brown 2000: 153 emphaty is the process of “putting yourself into someone else’s shoes,” of reaching beyond the self to understand what another person is feeling. It is probably the major factor in the harmonious coexistence of individuals in society. Language is one of the primary means of empathizing, but non verbal communication facilities the process of empathizing and must not be overlooked. It can also be said that there are two aspects to the development of empathy: first, an awareness and knowledge of one’s own feeling, and second, identification with another person or words learners can not fully empathize or know someone else until they adequately know themselves. So it is easy to achieve empathetic communication because there is immediate feedback from hearer in oral communication. 6 Extroversion Brown 2000: 155 defines extroversion as the extent to which a person has a deep-seated need to receive ego enhancement. Self-esteem, and a sense of wholeness lvi from other people as opposed to receiving that affirmation within oneself. Extroverts actually need other people in order to feel “good”. But extroverts are not necessary loudmouthed and talkative. They may be relatively shy but still need the affirmation of other hand, is the extent to which a person derives a sense of wholeness and fulfillment apart from a reflection of this self from other people. Contrary to teachers’ stereotypes, introverts can have an inner strength of character that extroverts do not have. From the explanation above it can be concluded that extroversion may be a factor in the development of general oral communicative competence which requires face-face interaction, but not in listening, reading, and writing. A teacher needs to beware of trying to “ create” in a student more cultural norms, to a student’s willingness to speak out in class, and to optimal points between extreme extroversion and introversion that may vary from student to student. d. Psychomotor Bloom also classifies psychomotor categories as follow: a. Imitation: watch and copy the actions of another b. Manipulation: perform a task without outside help or instruction, show ability to demonstrates skill to others. c. Precision: adeptly perform a task without outside help or instruction, show ability to demonstrates skill to others. d. Articulation: combine skill to meet new, unforeseen demands. e. Naturalisation: use internalized knowledge to perform task in a “second nature” way. http:www.kidsdevelopment CTRL.Html. lvii 3. The Language Development of Children 1 Vocabulary Growth Most children say an intelligible word during the second six months of life. Within the next few months many words follow. Lenneberg in Petty 1983: 65 says the eighteen-months-old infant has a “definite repertoire of words-more than three, but less than fifty. After speaking the first word or two, a child is likely to start naming things table, doggie, ball, etc and action play, see, drop, etc. By the time they are two years old, children know more than 50 words, many of which occur in two-word combination. At age two and a half, the average child has a 400-words vocabulary. This is the time of the most rapid increase in vocabulary, when the child vocalizes new words every day and speak more than two words at a time. Many children this age use sentences of four or five words or more. By the time children are three years old, their vocabularies of approximately 1,000 words. It is important to remember, however, that generalizing about “the average” may be misleading. Some children are advanced in speech and others are slow in developing it. Some children are slow in developing speech because they have received little reinforcement or have had their need met without having to speak. Smith in Elliot 2000: 45 gave estimates of the sizes of children’s vocabularies at other age levels: at four, 1540 words; at five, 2072 words; at six 2562 words. 2 Factors Influencing Language Development If the teacher has ever spent time with more than one preschool child or infant, the teacher probably noticed individual differences in language development. These differences exist because language development is a complex process that is sensitive to differences in the way children learn language, the language they learn, their personal characteristics, and the environment in which learning occurs. lviii 1 Intelligence Tests designed to measure intelligence generally rely on language ability as an index of intelligence. Numerous studies have shown that relationships exist between measures of intelligence and various measures of language. 2 Sex According to a number of studies, girls begin to talk earlier than boys and, as a result, apparently gain a head star in language development. Yet, in recent years tests of vocabulary, sentence comprehension, and verbal expression given to children between age two and a half and early adolescence have shown no differences at tributable to sex. 3 Physical Condition Language acquisition and development have several physical requirements. They include normally develop speech organs teeth, tongue, lips, throat, and larynx hearing organs, and neuromuscular system. In order for speech development to progress normally, all of these must function effectively. 4 Home and Family The family environment of the child is the most important determinant of the quality of the language facility he or she develops. In order to acquire language facility the infant and young child need to talk, to have language exchange with other person, and to have experiences on which to base thought and language. 5 Economic Condition Another major influence on children’s language development is their family’s economic circumstances. The predominant interpretation of research data in this area is that children in middle-income middle-class families exhibit a more highly develop elaborated, or complex syntactic usage than children from low-income homes. lix

E. Teaching English to Young Learners